There’s really no other way to say it: Bicycle Therapy-Melitta Racing had a great weekend on the cyclocross course. Like, a really great weekend. Between Saturday and Sunday at the Long Island Super Cross Cup and Kutztown Cross, the team won six races, took two second place finishes, and multiple top-tens. Not too shabby.

Domination at the Long Island Super Cross Cup:

Linda Mattioni beat the women’s 3/4 field both days, and Nathalie Anderson finished twice in the top ten.

Mikey Green won the men’s 2/3/4 race on Sunday and Brendan McGrath took second place both days.

2012 is shaping up to be quite the year for Specialized. The Venge was introduced on a Wednesday this past spring and was promptly ridden to victory at Milan-San Remo, the Amira got a complete redesign to make the best women’s race bike even better, and now we’ve got the 2012 Tarmac SL4.

The Tarmac has won the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia, the Tour of Flanders, and hundreds of other races since it’s debut half a dozen years ago. It’s gone through a lot of changes since 2005, but the Tarmac has always distinguished itself has being the best combination of the most sought-after attributes. Specialized, as it so often does, distilled the description of the bike down to its essence: Nothing is Stiffer and Lighter.

The new 2012 Tarmac SL4 continues the tradition of innovation by increasing overall torsional stiffness, decreasing the total weight of the frameset, but the icing on the cake is that the engineers in California somehow managed to do all that while make the bike more vertically compliant, aka more comfortable.

If you’re into numbers and graphs, check out the info below. You can find a lighter bike, you can’t find a stiffer bike, and definitely can’t find a lighter and stiffer bike. Combine this winning combo with handling that’s second to none and comfort rarely seen on a competition bike, and you’ve got what might be the best road bike, ever. If you want to find out what this kind of performance feels like, stop by the shop for a test ride and/or spend a day one of our demo Tarmacs.